EXCLUSIVE: Linda McMahon Explains Why Department Paused Involuntary Student Loan Collection

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Education paused involuntary collection of defaulted student loans, but Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told The Daily Signal the process will restart “sooner rather than later.”

McMahon said the department delayed the plan to garnish wages from defaulted borrowers in order to create time to make people aware of their options.

“Now, as the ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ has been passed,” she said, “and there are different options, we wanna make sure that as we continue to reform this repayment plan, which was an unmitigated disaster under the Biden administration … then all of these different ways to pay came into play, [and] people just stopped paying.”

“They didn’t know what they were supposed to do or not supposed to do,” she continued. “So, we wanna take some time to make sure that the options are very clear under the One Big, Beautiful Bill, two primary options, and one is to tie it very closely to an income-directed payment plan.”

The department announced last week it would delay the implementation of involuntary collections on federal student loans, including Administrative Wage Garnishment and the Treasury Offset Program. In December, the agency said it would start garnishing wages beginning the week of Jan. 7.

The options for loan repayment will be made more clear through communication, McMahon said.

“We wanna make sure they’re clear, that those who are participating understand exactly what’s expected of them and that it’ll move forward,” she said.

When asked when involuntary collections will resume, McMahon said it’ll depend on “how quickly we can get the payment plans in place.”

“It’s not that we’re starting today,” she added. “We have been working on these for a good while. So I expect that we’ll have them in place sooner rather than later.”

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